


Bottled Up

by itshysterekal



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 111 reaction fic, F/M, Gun Violence, M/M, NO DEATH, Suicidal Thoughts, remedial battle magic, there is no death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 21:10:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6393886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itshysterekal/pseuds/itshysterekal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emotions were never meant to be bottled- especially not for weeks at a time. </p>
<p>In which Quentin is furious and Eliot doesn't know how to fix things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bottled Up

**Author's Note:**

> This episode. I tell you what. The hills are alive with the sound of my screaming. None of my friends watch the show and they're probably starting to hate my escalating weekly outbursts. This week. THIS. WEEK. Anyway, I wrote a song about Eliot (a very canon song) and that wasn't enough, so then I wrote this. (This episode also gave me the probability spell I didn't know I was missing in the multi-chapter queliot I'm working on, but I don't want to post that until it's mostly done because I don't like having more than one published WIP.)
> 
> But seriously though, CONTENT WARNING (is that big enough to attract attention?) on this for attempted (and failed) suicide. (I really wanted it to look real, but I'd rather warn anyone who might be so angry/upset about it that they'd stop reading and have their night ruined.)

Eliot couldn't stop himself. His body was moving without his permission, almost as if the magic they'd used to manipulate their emotions had broken his. He knew Quentin would regret this, would hate him for it later, but Eliot couldn't bring himself to care. The truth, if he'd been willing to give it to Margo, was that he was so much calmer than the rest of them because he'd been on this runaway train since Mike. Somewhere, higher in his brain, he knew he was killing himself with all the drugs and alcohol, and that higher part of his brain wasn't convinced it was a bad thing. So Eliot touched and felt and drank and floated on every color of the rainbow (which he'd taken in the form of pills) and ignored everything else. Nothing hurt when he was like this. Sometimes he almost felt good.

The pills ran out, though. The wine wasn't enough to silence the echoing of Quentin's voice, telling Eliot that he and Margo had ruined the younger student's life. Part of him knew Quentin was still reeling from having his emotions bottled too long, and another part of Eliot knew that he was going through the same thing. Quentin was the one with depression, the one that might kill himself if pushed too far. Eliot couldn't let that happen.

"We weren't in control," he said, not even bothering to ask Alice if he could come in. He felt shaky. Whether it was his emotional state or withdrawal, he had no idea. "That spell and the alcohol-"

"Please get out of my room," she interrupted. Her voice was quiet and calm, but somehow it stopped him cold. He felt like he was going to throw up.

"You just need to know that he would never have done that if he'd been in control. He's going to fall apart without you. He loves you."

Alice met his eyes and Eliot saw his own pain reflected there. She knew, then. She knew how he felt about Quentin. "Not enough to say no."

"We let the spell go too long. It made all of us irrational. Trust me when I say love is not enough to fight off last night's horror show." He tried to smirk as if it didn't matter, but it probably looked more like a grimace.

"I'm pretty sure you weren't exactly eager to fight him off," she replied bitterly.

"I'm pretty sure that anyone who loves him enough to pay attention knows you're what's best for him. You're the person he loves, and anyone who really cared about him would have stopped him if they could. Just... Never mind. Fuck it. Love is bullshit, life is pain. I'm not doing you any favors telling you that you've got something to fight for."

He wanted to say more, but he could tell she was one sentence away from getting her bearings back after his sudden change of heart and Eliot had no desire to continue the conversation. He had no desire to continue anything.

Looking at the mess of his room, Eliot wondered if he should bother hiding the evidence of his insomniac nights of drug abuse and wanton destruction. Clothes, papers, some of the smaller furniture all littered the floor. No, he'd leave it. Not that any of them would question why he did it, but at least it would give some physical evidence of his slow descent into madness. He grabbed the gun he'd gotten from Lovelady (the man had been confused about why a student would want non-magical contraband, but Eliot had mentioned the attack on the school and the questions disappeared into a pale look) and left his room, not bothering with the door.

"Hey!"

It was Quentin and he sounded like he was ready for a fight. Eliot picked up his pace, his only response being the quickening of his pace. He couldn't get to the bathroom or downstairs, so he rushed for the roof, casting a simple locking spell on the door.

The air outside swirled around him as he staggered into the open. The sun was jarring in its loveliness and Eliot was temporarily frozen as he looked at it all. The world was fuzzy around the edges, like trying to watch an old movie on a screen with too much definition. It was also beautiful and grounding.

It didn't change his mind. 

His hands were steady for the first time in days, though they felt heavy as he looked at the gun. This should feel bigger, more significant, but it didn't feel any different from anything else he'd done over the past few weeks. At least this way, he'd stop drawing it out, worrying Margo.

"Shit," he hissed out as he remembered Margo. "Shit, I should've..." He shook his head. A note would probably only piss her off more. He raised the gun and shut his eyes. The light pressure of the barrel on his temple felt comforting, almost like a cool caress. He jumped as the roof door blasted open and he whirled, temporarily lowering the gun. "Quentin, go back inside," he said, but his voice wasn't nearly as steady as his hands.

"Eliot, stop," Quentin said, holding a hand out in the universal gesture that means someone wants to come closer but is too afraid to set someone off. 

Scratching his head with the butt of the gun, Eliot started pacing. He didn't want to do this in front of Quentin. He'd fucked Quentin's life enough... by fucking him. He didn't need to make Quentin watch someone get their brains blown out from a few meters away. "Go inside, Quentin."

"Give me the gun."

"I ruined your life, remember?!" Eliot snapped. "It's better this way! It's better for everyone! It's better for me."

"So- what? This is supposed to make it better?" Quentin demanded. "You and Margo you- you do whatever you did to my brain last night and then you expect me to talk you down?"

"Our brains were fucked too, Quentin! The last thing I want is- Just fucking go inside, Quentin!" Eliot shouted. Then he shouted again, a loud wordless scream. He was furious and broken and out of control and Quentin was only making it worse. "I am going to shoot myself in the fucking head and the only thing you can change is whether or not you see it, okay?!"

His outburst seemed to have shocked the words out of his friend, enemy, lover, whatever the fuck Quentin was. Mourner, maybe. Eliot pressed the gun back to his head, looking Quentin in the eye to give him one last chance but Quentin only started coming toward him- probably to grab the gun- so Eliot pulled the trigger.

***

Quentin could still feel the sting where Alice had slapped him, but that was about the only thing he felt. He'd yelled at Eliot and Margo and maybe it had been unreasonable, but his life was spiraling out of control, more than it ever had, and Quentin didn't know what to do. He thought about checking himself in again, but he knew magic was probably the only thing that could get him through. He went to get a drink but as soon as he saw the alcohol, he felt angry all over again. The last thing he wanted was to risk drinking again. He headed upstairs, intending to spend some time alone on the roof when he saw Eliot. "Hey!" he called out, his anger deciding it had found a target. "Eliot!" he called again. This was Eliot's fault. Eliot had dragged them all into this, with his self-destructive, binge drinking- what was in his hand?

"Eliot, wait!" Quentin called, feeling guilty all of a sudden. He hated how he couldn't just stop caring about someone even when they screwed him over.

The door shut and locked smoothly and Quentin knew it was magic. Maybe it wasn't a gun, maybe it was a small beer can or something... Except Eliot only drank wine. There was no doubt in Quentin's mind that Eliot would never drink wine from a can. Did wine even come in a can? "Shit," he said, remembering he was in a rush. He tried some basic unlocking spells before giving up on that and just trying to fire every bit of battle magic they'd tried over the past few days until one of them blasted the door open.

Eliot did have a gun. Quentin was pretty sure it had been touching his head. That was good, right? Eliot had been alone for at least a minute with a gun to his head, and he hadn't done it. On autopilot, he started trying to reason with the older student, but his anger got the better of him and the Eliot... snapped. He was raw pain and Quentin had never been so terrifying aware of someone spinning out of control. He'd been in that place. He couldn't imagine having something to focus all that pain on. He opened his mouth to tell Eliot that, to tell him that he knew what it was like to feel like you were being eaten alive, to feel like you were ruining the lives of everyone around you. He would've felt guilty when he remembered what he'd said, but Eliot was raising the gun and Quentin sprang forward, hand outstretched to try to grab the gun even though he was still two strides too far when it went off.

The world went quiet and Quentin stopped breathing. He couldn't hear anything, not even the thud of Eliot's body as he hit the ground. A high pitched ringing started into the silence and he realized the volume of the gunshot had affected his hearing. He said Eliot's name and wasn't sure if he'd made any sound. Numbly, he closed the distance between them and fell to his knees. He reached for the magician's shoulder and gently turned him. Eliot's outline was blurred by tears, but Quentin could still make out the deep red of blood. He blinked even though he would rather not see this clearly and saw Eliot's face screwed in pain.

He was alive.

Eliot was alive.

With an inaudible sob of relief, Quentin pulled him into a hug. His gaze was caught by sudden motion. It was the bullet falling harmlessly to the ground. He touched the wound on Eliot's head. It wasn't a graze. It looked like the bullet had stopped just short of doing any lasting damage, and Quentin realized he'd done that. He'd cast some kind of magic to stop it.

He didn't have time to puzzle about it any more as arms wrapped around him and he started to vaguely hear the sound of Eliot crying. Quentin was in love with Alice. He wanted Alice. For some reason, that didn't stop him from pressing a fervent and desperate kiss to Eliot's forehead. Gratitude overwhelmed him and he kissed that forehead again, hugging the man a little tighter than maybe he should. Quentin didn't know what was going to happen or how this was going to work. He just knew he had to hold Eliot until they could both hear again so he could talk to him and tell him how fucking stupid he was and probably kill him.

It wasn't to last, though. Others had heard the gunshot and had come up to see what had happened. He heard a distant scream that he thought was Margo. Quentin realized the angle he was holding Eliot from made it impossible to see his face and his grip had relaxed enough that he might look dead. Reluctantly, he pulled away from the precious, still intact head to say "He's okay, he's fine, can we please... crowd control." He couldn't hear his voice and was glad because his sentences were hardly complete and only borderline coherent. Those bottles had been the worst thing any of them had ever done.

Quentin stood, trying to meet Eliot's gaze as Margo came for him, but Eliot wouldn't look at any of them. He curled into Margo's half embrace like a wounded animal and something inside Quentin broke. He looked out and saw Alice watching him sadly, but she didn't look angry anymore. She continued to look at him, so he walked numbly over to her. Her lips moved but her voice was muffled and rubbery. He rubbed at his ear as if that would help and she reached for his hand and pulled it down. She traced the shell of his ear and he felt her fingers pushing the air with magic as the sound rushed back in. "Come on," she said quietly.

"I love you," he told her, needing her to know it.

"I know."

"I think I love him too," he admitted. His voice was uncertain and confused, but his confusion was regarding how it happened. The feelings were there and he knew they weren't going away.

She tugged him inside and they followed Margo as she carefully helped Eliot down the stair. Quentin's eyes fell on the red staining his collar. The bullet may not have done too much damage, but Eliot was still bleeding badly enough for the infirmary. He turned his gaze to Margo as she spoke. "We'll figure it out."

"But-"

"Quentin, you've met my parents. I'm still- I'm still mad and hurt, but... Look, we'll just. We'll figure it out, okay?"

He gave her a weak smile and she returned a slightly weaker one. She squeezed his hand and they lapsed into silence. Quentin was still worried, but he felt less on edge now. Maybe things would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I like open ended things. Queliot trash though I may be, I still ship Margo/Alice, so in my head this ends up being a bit of a quad. I will leave the rest to you. Unless you mentally kill everyone off and then please just leave them in the sandbox. My heart cannot take the perma-death.


End file.
